secret-to-success-doing-the-work

The Es­sen­tial But Rarely Talked About Se­cret To Success

These guys made my day while I was hav­ing a late break­fast at Star­bucks ear­lier to­day. They’re flip-flop­ping their way through Bangkok’s elec­tric­ity wires, ei­ther adding new wires, or re­mov­ing old ones.

The guy on the left, sit­ting on noth­ing but wires, would take a short break every now and then and send a bright smile to passersby.

While I was watch­ing they moved about 5 or 7 me­ters from right to left, do­ing their work.

It’s not glamorous.

  • Me­ter by me­ter they keep Bangkok’s elec­tric­ity working.
  • If they de­cided to call it a day, a tiny part of the city would have a tiny problem.
  • If some of their col­leagues did the same, prob­lems would start pil­ing up.

It’s the lit­tle work that needs to be done ‘be­hind the scenes’ to make Bangkok the pop­u­lar city it is.

Suc­cess coaches and mo­ti­va­tional speak­ers talk about how we can build our dream. How we can fol­low our bliss. How we’ll do the work that we love.

Yet, build­ing a busi­ness re­quires a lot of mun­dane, not-so-glam­orous work, just like main­tain­ing Bangkok’s electricity.

  • The en­tre­pre­neur build­ing the al­most prover­bial Golf busi­ness finds that his busi­ness isn’t grow­ing while be­ing on the golf court.
  • The dog lover build­ing the al­most prover­bial dog groom­ing busi­ness finds that his busi­ness isn’t grow­ing while play­ing with the puppies.

As biz own­ers we of­ten find the list of mun­dane, daily tasks is longer than the list of ex­cit­ing tasks. Yet, if we stop do­ing them , our busi­ness won’t even exist.

This is the not-so-glam­orous suc­cess se­cret the mo­ti­va­tional speak­ers for­get to tell us:

Turn­ing your dream into a real suc­cess re­quires do­ing the lit­tle and bor­ing things day in, day out.

Take a mo­ment and make a quick list:

  • What are the sim­ple, bor­ing tasks in your biz you re­sist or avoid? 

The re­sis­tance is ac­tu­ally tiny. It doesn’t take much to break it once we put our mind to it.

Or, as M.R. Kop­meyer wrote:

„DO the thing and you will have the power!”